Diii: Wtf?

http://kotaku.com/5825580/blizzard-w...for-real-money

Now with officially sponsored RMT.
Unless you're a hardcore player, in which case, for some reason, you can't access the AH at all.

Lol wut? They're integrating two auction systems. You can use both currencies to buy and trade.

The mandatory Internet connection sucks. I'm not surprised they're trying to make money with AH, though. Maybe it's their way of telling all the online shops to fuck off.

Has it been specified that it will require a constant internet connection or not? Starcraft 2 requires you to authenticate with a valid battle.net account to play the single player mode, but it doesn't require you to be constantly connected to the internet to play. If it's different for Diablo 3, I would suspect they are just requiring everyone to play on battle.net which would seem pretty lame to me. I see no problem with allowing people to play on a LAN with friends or single player without an internet connection, if authentication is required regardless. The claim I've heard regarding their motives is that they are doing this to prevent piracy.

They've confirmed the requirement for always on and justify it by their AH feature. TBH, yes, the AH wouldn't work if stuff could be earned offline, giving hackers the opportunity to directly alter their save game, but what if I don't care about the AH and want to play truly solo?

It seems obvious that if there were a singleplayer mode, you shouldn't expect to be able to trade items on battle.net from those characters. That's exactly how Diablo 2 functions, essentially. That's a pretty stupid justification for requiring a constant connection for any play.